


Playing Army

by Velvedere



Category: Thor (Comics)
Genre: Bullies, Fluff, Gen, Implied Angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-12
Updated: 2015-12-12
Packaged: 2018-05-06 08:32:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,054
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5410094
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Velvedere/pseuds/Velvedere
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki gives an inspiring speech to his troops.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Playing Army

Loki stood before his row of assembled animals and figurines, his stance tall, one of authority and might as he propped one fist on his hip. His arm swept before him in a grand arc, clearing the path for the words that followed.

“I have summoned you here because all of you have demonstrated utmost competence and capability in your fields,” he said, his voice reaching to the ceiling of his small and modest bedchamber. “You are the best of the best. The very top! The epitome of all your peoples have to offer. That’s why I have chosen you for my team.”

The figures sat quietly, staring up at him with blank, black eyes.

Well, except for the little stuffed dog who was missing one of its eyes. In several places its stitching had come loose, spilling white fluff between the threads. The X that remained where a button-eye should have been marked the place of an otherwise impressive scar.

The primate doll slumped to one side. It would not sit up straight no matter how many times Loki shouted for it to stand at attention.

The sculpted lady figurine with the shorn hair was excused from standing up straight. She could only remain upright on her own if she was seated.

There were others. A floppy turtle. Some plastic character with a sharp sword and even sharper hair. A rabbit holding an egg. Loki crossed his arms over his chest as he looked at them all with a stern eye.

“I will say to you now: it will not be easy. I’ve trained better toys than you and sent them out on countless missions. Some of them never returned. But they thought it well worth the risk. Even if you are killed in action, you go to your fate knowing that somehow, at least in this small way, you leave the world a better place than when you found it…”

A rounded snowman that had once been white but whose fabric had long been darkened by stains promptly fell over in a draft. Its bottom was not conducive to long-term standing.

“Soldier!” Loki snapped, shaking his finger. “This is no time to be lying down on the job! You could have walked away ages ago! When I found you, you were nothing! You were lying in a dumpster ready to be thrown away! But I picked you up and took you in because I saw potential! Are you going to make a liar of me?”

The snowman lay quietly on its side, its stick arms stuck out at odd angles. Its permanently-sewn face smiling inanely at nothing.

Loki felt a little pang of regret for his choice of words.

He _had_ found it in a dumpster a few days ago.

He’d been in Broxton, hiding in an alleyway from a pack of local bullies who had yet to cease taking a great deal of delight in the novelty of picking on an Asgardian god. Crouched in the shadow of a dumpster, he sniffled and wiped his nose, waiting for the throb in his shoulder to cease its painful echo of their jests.

“Hey, Ass-guardian!”

Loki only ever gave them sidelong glances anymore. The insult had long ceased to incite any reaction.

“Yes, dullard?”

Grinning. Gap-toothed. Overly pink freckled faces with squinting eyes in the Oklahoma sun. They were all bigger than him, and they had him surrounded.

“Know what time it is down here on Earth?” the leader sneered.

“Time for you to learn to breathe through your nose, I expect.” Despite being outnumbered and the many – _many_ – times they’d beaten him already, Loki’s tongue never quite grasped the concept of restraint.

“It’s punch thirty!”

They laughed like a chorus of jackals. A thing Loki could never quite fathom, as the pun made no sense at all. But their fists on his shoulder made the point rather irrelevant.

He could have called for his brother, but…he did not want to. Maybe he simply didn’t want Thor to see…

A door in the alleyway opened. Loki stilled, holding his breath, knees drawn to his chest as he feared the pack of jeering jackals had discovered his hiding place.

But it was only a human disposing of their refuse.

“…never played much with them anyway…” The man spoke to someone inside. “…waste…outgrown them now…useless junk…never should have bothered…”

He tossed a black bag into the dumpster, and grumbled as he returned to indoors.

After waiting several heartbeats, Loki let out his breath. He rose and stood on the toes of his boots, using another refuse bin lining the alleyway to climb up into the green metallic monstrosity. He peered in over the side, curious as to what a human could throw away in such quantity.

The black bag had spilled open, revealing the toys, many of them indeed old and next to falling apart. The snowman peeked out of the bag’s opening most prominently, its upside down smile in the dumpster striking Loki as somehow the saddest of all.

He dug them out, picking them up and brushing them off one by one as he smiled to them each in turn.

“You’re not a waste,” he said, holding the snowman long in particular, looking over its stained and spoiled hide. “You’re not useless. Come on. You can come home with me.”

He knelt down and righted the snowman in his room, patting its head in reassurance.

The dusty fur coat he wore – a sign of his office, naturally – brushed the ground as he did so, a great deal of it already training behind him and drooping down beyond the length of his hands. The collar of it tickled soft marten against his cheek. (He’d found the coat in the dumpster too.)

“I’m sorry,” he said, smiling affectionately down to the snowman. He righted his place and adjusted him back into line with the others. “I didn’t mean it. You know how I get, son. It was the tension of the moment. Don’t you worry. I picked you up and took you home because I love you, and I always will, no matter how dirty you get.”

He tweaked the snowman’s soft carrot nose. An affectionate gesture reserved just for him.

Loki grinned.

“Now let’s go save the world again, huh?”


End file.
